It’s been a few weeks now since I switched from Safari to Firefox, full-time. Following is a list of plug-ins (extensions and themes) that I found useful after making the shift. Some give back features found in Safari, and some are just general improvements. If you can find at least ONE plug-in here that you want, I have succeeded.

The first thing you might want to install is the GrApple theme. It makes Firefox look a bit more like Safari, and brings some of that unified look. You can see some of it in the screenshot above. It also applies to for instance the Downloads window, not just the main window. I’ve tried other “osx-like”-themes, and most of them just seem out of place. This one is truly beautiful however.

Adblock Plus
This is THE ad-blocker to use for Firefox. I had previously been using PithHelmet for Safari. Adblocker Plus brings that same functionality to Firefox, and allows you to easily filter out banners and flash content. Truly a must-have.

CustomizeGoogle
Does just what it says. Allows you to customize the look and feel of Google pages. Remove banners, add links to “perform the same search in Wikipedia/IMBD/Yahoo/Live Search”, and my favorite: link directly to the image file when you click a thumbnail on Google Image search.

DownThemAll!
A download manager with all the usual bells and whistles. Supposed to “increase download speed with up to 400%”, I’m guessing by using multiple connections, among other things. What I use it for however, is the easy way to download all the files on a page. Say a page full of images. It can also go down a level, if say the page is full of thumbnails, and you want to download the full-size images.

Fission
Brings the progress bar up where it belongs: in the address bar. Safari style.

Gmail Manager
Checks for new email in your Gmail account. Replaced the Google Notifier menubar extra for me. What sets this apart from the rest is the ability to check multiple accounts.

Greasemonkey
From the site: “Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript”. And that’s exactly what it does. Check out Userscripts.org for a very very long list of scripts you can use with Greasemonkey.

Linkification
Turns links that aren’t clickable, into, well, clickable links. The way it should be!

Live PageRank
Displays the Google Pagerank for any site you are on. Useful? Nah. Fun? Maybe…

myurlbar_a
For some reason, Firefox will only pop up suggestions-as-you-type for sites in your History when you type in the addressbar. Not sites from your Bookmarks. myurlbar_a fixes this, and even lets you type any part of the bookmark, including it’s name, or part of it’s URL (not necessarily the beginning). Only “problem” is if you have a very slow Mac, or a giant collection of bookmarks, it might be a bit slow.

Screengrab!
I’ve mentioned this before, and basically it’s a plug-in that let’s you save screenshots of entire webpages. Or just a frame. Or a selection.

Stop Autoplay
How many times have you listened to your favorite music, and all of a sudden all hell breaks lose when some idiot have embedded a midi file on a site you’re visiting? Well here’s the cure 🙂

That’s the full list of plug-ins that I use, and I only expect it to grow. Not a bad start though. Firefox really seems like the perfect browser for me right now, with these additions. Now all we need is some more Macification. Some cocoa. And maybe stop assigning all downloaded zip-files with StuffIt, Mozilla? I hope you’re listening!